Maple Syrup Sculpture Project (2018)
Maple Mews is a re-purposed building on 75 North Road, Randburg, South Africa. Six months ago I was asked to design a wall-mounted sculpture for the Maple Mews building by Netwater Properties. It was an old dilapidated empty building, made new by visionary people to become useful again and provide affordable housing in the city.
The Plans for 'Maple Syrup'.
I wanted to do something happy and simple to cheer people up and decided to use drips of Maple Syrup dripping down the side of the building and 'spilling' over a wall onto the pavement.It was really scary to think that my small drawing would become a huge sculpture. Because of a tight budget, I had to lay out the design into many short pieces which I fitted into four 3000mmx1500mmx3mm steel plates to be cut at a local laser company.
Lay Out on Site.
I had to fly back to the Netherlands and marked all the pieces and wrote detailed instructions for the installers. It was nerve wrecking not to be present when they started to copy the shapes onto the wall.
A Mammoth Job 14m high Scaffolding.
After the image was traced onto the wall the positions of the brackets were determined and fixed onto the wall. The welding team made all the brackets and the painters painted and painted.
Securing the Plates.
The plates were screwed onto the brackets and then the final sanding and prep started before the final coats of paint came on.
Final coat done and ready for the 'Reveal'.
More brackets were made and painted to use the negative cut-out shapes from the 'Maple Syrup' sculpture as art pieces around the building and in the back garden.
My workshop when I returned end of November 2018.
I chose pieces to weld frames on and had them painted by the amazing painting team.
Help fromStudents on Summer Holiday.
Jani and Rosa bending the 'Maple Syrup' planters into shape on the jig we welded onto a steel table. It was tough and the sun was hot; 37 degrees.
We decided to use all the interesting negatives to make more works.
Putting up the Maple Syrup Planters was a big challenge since the hardware to attach them was not locally available and we had to improvise.
The Maple Syrup Bird feeders were quick and easy to make and install.
The garden and the planters are starting to look good.together.
Installing The Signage.
The plans changed and these 'drips' had to be lengthened since the wall got even higher for security reasons.
Rainwater tanks everywhere.
A few snags to sort out but my work was done.
This was a collaboration between a developer and their staff, an architect, a building team, painters, welders, an electrician team, carpenters, plumbers, a garden architect team, an artist team and a lot of people helping and working together to make this building into a beautiful home for many. Thank you all for making this possible.
